| Later known as the Chicago Portage, this small
area became the "Gateway to the West", and was used by
thousands of early settlers and traders traveling both east and
west. The discovery of "Le Portage" was the impetus that
led to Chicago becoming a center for the world trade. Louis Joliet
conceived the idea of constructing a canal to connect the two waterways.
This idea was to become a reality 200 years later with the opening
of the Illinois—Michigan Canal. Today, a statue stands in
Lyons at the Chicago Portage National Historic Sight just north
of Interstate 55 along Harlem Avenue, commemorating this historic
National Heritage Corridor which stretches southwest thru LaSalle,
Illinois.
Through the 1980s Lyons was known for its notorious links to organized
crime. Mayor William Smith, for whom a village park was named, was
being subjected to a federal corruption investigation when he died
from cancer in 1989. During the 1970s and 1980s the small town was
littered with strip clubs and bars along its Ogden Avenue corridor.
However, the Village changed dramatically in the 1990s and all of
the strip clubs and the majority of the bars no longer exist. Lyons
is a working class area, though much of the nearby manufacturing
work has dried up (e.g., Electro-Motive & Reynolds).
The city has historically been home to a large Polish American
community since the turn of the century, which is reflected in three
of the town's street names: Pulaski after Revolutionary War hero
Casimir Pulaski as well as Warsaw and Cracow. Lyons is the subject
of a recently published book by Mark Athitakis, a native of Lyons,
detailing the town's rich and colorful history. |
